Warhammer: Invasion North American Championship at GenCon 2012

I packed a Dark Elf deck to GenCon 2012 specifically for the North American Championship event and ended up doing very well considering the circumstances. First off, I couldn’t decide what deck to bring, or build for that matter, so HappyDD and I discussed some options the day before I left and I ended up using a slightly modified version of one of his decks that is based around the Offering to Hekarti quest. I’ll post a deck list later when I have it handy. Secondly, I had originally planned to build a deck and test it extensively during July and June but with various holidays and other events taking priority I showed up in Indianapolis with zero prep. In fact, my experience with the deck consisted of 4 to 5 simulations of play on the night before the tournament. Alchemist (my friend who attended GenCon with me) doesn’t play W:I and I didn’t bring any other decks so it was a pretty useless exercise but I got a feel for it.
There were sixteen competitors including a guy from England who doesn’t have a local play group (he only plays in tournaments!). The majority of the people were from Indiana and some were from nearby states. I talked quite a bit with two of the Indy guys (Adam and Steve, who who placed 1st and 2nd overall) and they seemed like a very nice bunch of guys with a solid play group. We played three matches of Swiss (each match a best of three) to determine the top four.

I was paired first against Steve and he was playing an Empire deck that he said later was design specifically to destroy DE. Lucky me. ;) He bulldozed straight over me for two rounds to win the best of three. The deck was brutally fast, with a battlefield consisting of cheap warrior units that quickly stack power. The quest and kingdom were full of CV, Derricksberg Forge, and Church of Sigmar. He won so fast that we got in three more casual games while waiting for the round to finish.

My second match was against a DE mill deck that was strong but not quite refined enough to hold it’s own. I won the first and third round for the win. On the first round, my opponent played a development after the battlefield phase and I let it slide but told him that I was aware. It’s a good thing too because in the last round I gaffed by mistakenly played Withering Hex on his Warpstone Excavation (which is not a Building) and we didn’t notice until a few turns later. It would have made a slight difference, as he was trying to play a card to kill three of my units, but by that point I had a substantial lead and enough resources and good cards in hand to win regardless.
My last match was against a Chaos deck, I couldn’t figure out what the exact strategy was but it partially involved being able to attack from any zone while corrupted… like the previous match the deck didn’t seem refined enough. If I remember right, I won the first and third rounds.

After the Swiss was over, I was tied for fourth spot in the finals. It was randomly determine that I place fifth. It’s disappointing to lose a critical position like that by chance but I’m still very happy with how I performed. As one of the top 8, I received a NA Championship play mat (the art has a HE guy riding a gryphon) of which there are only eight that exist so that’s pretty cool. All participants got a specially card box as well. I’ll take some photos of them when I’m at the local league night this Thursday.

I didn’t stick around for the finals because another event had started that I was signed up for, so I thanked everyone, wished them well and headed to a different area of the convention center.

Was the order really random. I know that there were multiple people who had a 2 to 1 record, but I thought that the order was based on strength of schedule. I am one of the guys who made the top four cut with a 2-1 record, but I thought I made it because my record was better. The two matches I won were 2-0 victories, and my loss was a 2-1 loss to Steve, who was undefeated.

Ahh, you are probably right. When the top four were announce, I only heard two of the names so when I ask the TO if he’d said my name he said “No, it was really close. You were tied for fourth but the computer decided you were fifth.” So I just assumed that was a random thing. Given your better record though, it makes sense that you advanced. Thanks for point that out :)

The DCI method does use strength of schedule, if that’s what they were using. If you had the same strength of schedule it goes to “games won”… Or maybe I have that in reverse. But whatever it is, it isn’t obvious when you look at the win/loss. Were they short on time, so they couldn’t do a Top 8?